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We get video rebuttals! A Christian’s Response To “The Atheist Experience”

A viewer was kind (?) enough to email the video to us, and I thought I’d pass it along. The title is “A Christian’s Response To ‘The Atheist Experience’. (Bible Truth And Commonsense)” and the description text is “A RESPONSE TO THE ABSURDITIES AND FALLACIES OF THE SHOW” (all caps preserved).

There are about a dozen remarks that I don’t think I need to make, but my thoughts can be summed up like this: If noimplant4me were to call in to the show, I fear that he would be accused of trolling us, or we would be accused of inventing him to make ourselves look good.

Needless to say, he is welcome to call in any time. Atheists are already mostly on top of the comment thread, although you probably already know how useful I think YouTube comments are. (Not useful at all.) But if you make your way there, feel free to let him know that we’ve publicized his delightful video, and link the page with instructions on how to call the show.

I think the only response I’ll make — as politely as possible — is that he has perhaps misunderstood the notion that there is some kind of “rule” against quoting the Bible at us. You can quote the Bible all you want, but since we don’t believe the Bible is divinely inspired or has a particular claim to the truth, it just isn’t particularly useful to us in a conversation, absent some prior discussion about why we should change our minds about that.

He refused to link to the show on principle, so I don’t know exactly what was being discussed in the clip he mentioned. But the reference to Captain Kirk was undoubtedly because of my frequent observation that somebody who quotes the Bible is no more credible to us than a Trekkie who constantly quotes from Star Trek. It’s all fiction, from our point of view.

Updated: A Facebook commenter informs me that he was responding to this video.

Comments

He has both Jewish and Christian symbols behind him? That’s a pretty sure sign of bogosity right there. Didn’t Jesus have something to say about mindlessly quoting Scripture instead of just using intelligence and good judgement? Didn’t Jesus get crucified for NOT mindlessly obeying religious law at all times?

Minute 1:25 of the video: WOW!!! The Earth spins 60,000 miles per hour?!?! I had no idea!! :-/

Dude, it actually spins at more like 1,000 miles per hour at the equator:
Earth’s circumference at the equator = 24,901.55 miles
Time in which it takes to make one full rotation at the equator = 24 hours

24901.55mi / 24hr= 1037.565mi/hr

That’s not hard math to do.

No to mention at the poles it spins at exactly 0 mi/hr, with every speed from 0 to 1,038 in between due to the varying circumference of the earth but let’s just assume he was going for the most impressive number he could come up with… and over estimated by a factor of 60…

This is why I hate both the use of the word “Poe,” and the automatic conclusion that somebody who sounds ignorant must be faking. In the first place, “Poe’s Law” actually states that you can’t tell the difference between a parody and the real thing, so if you declare certainty then you are contradicting Poe’s Law. In the second place… yes, really, there are people who sound like this in real life. Far more of those people than there are atheists who would care enough to waste this much time generating an elaborate hoax.

I’m not sure if it is Christian’s own egocentric (or christo-centric, or whatever the word is) view of the world, or something that could be done on the show to eliminate the false dichotomy that Christians seem to have about atheism. It is not “either the Christian god or atheism.” There are hundreds, if not thousands of religions. They are all pretty much equally plausible. Yours is not any more special than anyone else’s. Atheists are not out against Christianity; they just don’t happen to believe in any of the religions that other humans have invented.

For starters, I think we could do more to clarify the situation by not saying “I don’t believe in God,” because this is already somewhat conceding the idea of the Abrahamic god. Instead, have the believer define the god or gods (including all the demigods, like demons, angels, etc.) that they believe in and then you can say whether or not you believe in that particular set of magical metaphystical beings. No particular mythology deserves precedence over others in opposition to atheism.

How charming – that this guy has called in with a rebuttal – and during it, says that one of the women on the show (Jen) was like someone with Autism (Dustin Hoffman’s character in Rainman). Charming. There are only articulate people who host the show…especially Jen…so maybe this guy was watching something else… Perhaps he was watching Rainman and became confused… Please Please can this guy call in! (And hopefully get Matt as he’s said ‘Maybe you should read the bible’…Matt would have something to say about that.)

oh and @scottjarvis – Spot on with that!

NB. his wife kicking in with the vacuum cleaner at 12mins 20secs…probably to drown his noise out…after telling him to post a video response…probably to get him to stop annoying her.

He doesn’t make a single valid point, but insults Jen several times. Now, the Irish in me wants to smack this dude around, the patriot in me wants to leave him to his own opinion, the Atheist in me wants to call him on his patent ad homs and other logical fallacies, but the Humanist, and most prevalent facet, in me wants to just ignore the jackass (after a snide remark or two on his Youtube account, of course). Still, anyone who insults Jen in that manner when I am within arms reach, will get their bell rung, regardless of my Humanistic tendencies.

Most theists accept the idea that all god concepts are (“in reality”) glimpses of the same god, just that everyone else gets something wrong in translation for various reasons, usually involving the concepts of sin and/or demons. So, they see it as “either God or atheism”.

He might answer a question with a question yes: “Well where did the matter come from which caused the “Big Bang?” But whatever it is, here is a guy behaving the same way the players on the show behave. You say, “the very definition of arrogance and ignorance.” The hosts of the show, which I by the way am a huge fan of, while they are by no means ‘ignorant,” they are every bit as ‘arrogant.’ There is a mythology around atheists-mostly among themselves-that being an atheist makes you instantly intelligent and at the very least more enlightened than a theist. This, to me, is very silly, because atheists seem to define intelligence as ‘knowing all the logical fallacies.’ Sure, most atheists know the bible very well, and can debunk a lot of creationist “evidence” without even thinking too hard, but they are not necessarily knowledgeable about anything else besides ‘why there is no god/gods.’ And about arrogance, I’ve never seen such arrogance as I’ve seen on freethoughtblogs.com. Here’s a site which exists primarily to make fun of other peoples beliefs. And you have the gall to call *this* guy arrogant? It appears that Christians don’t hoard all of the hypocrisy and keep it to themselves. Atheists are some of the most hypocritical, closed minded people I’ve ever come across. Having an open mind to me is more admirable than memorizing some fallacies and sitting around mocking theists, or anybody else.

That episode was called “Viewer Calls,” but he refers to it as “You haven’t read your bible, have you? that’s the problem” so yes he was referring to this 4 minute clip. Then he complains about how long the clip was while he makes a 15 minute rebuttal.

A few months back I commented on his video pointing out something like 12 errors, never got a response.

Whenever life gets you down, Mrs.Brown
And things seem hard or tough
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft
And you feel that you’ve had quite enough…

Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour
That’s orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it’s reckoned
A sun that is the source of all our power

The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm,
at forty thousand miles an hour
Of the galaxy we call the ‘milky way’

Kazim is correct, strong support for Israel is a common (but not universal) piece of evangelical/fundamentalist Christian theology, espectially those groups that emphasize end times prophecy. End times prophecy is based around both old and new testament passages, but is definitely not a Jewish belief.

One practical political consequence of this is that Evangelical Christians tend to side almost exclusively with Israel on any issues surrounding Palestinian conflicts, etc.

According to Scripture, Israel has an important role to play in the end-times. For centuries Bible scholars pondered over the prophecy of a restored Israel. “’This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will take the Israelites out of the nations where they have gone. I will gather them from all around and bring them back into their own land” (Ezekiel 37:21; cf. Zephaniah 3:19,20). When the modern nation of Israel was founded in 1948, and Jews began returning from all around the world, Bible scholars knew that God was at work and that we were very likely living in the last days.

But God’s timetable moves at a different pace than some would like. Over half a century later, Israel is still there, but turmoil and struggle between Palestinians and Israelis, between Arabs and Jews, seem to be hindering the prophetic promise Christians saw beginning to happen in 1948. And many Christians outside Israel seem bent on assisting God in fulfilling His prophesied blessing on His chosen people.

But what part should Christians play in the current conflict? Do we allow our unqualified support for a non-Christian nation to be interpreted by Palestinians as setting aside our basic Christian principles of justice, love for enemies, respect for human life, honesty, and fairness? Do we have as much concern for the souls of Israelis as we have for hastening the fulfillment of God’s prophecy concerning the Jews?
…
Though we have emotional ties and affections with Israel, we cannot endorse and approve every action of a particular country whether right or wrong. Our faith calls us to pray for peace and seek to share the gospel message with all who are lost and without a Savior. The heart of Jesus must break over the worldwide conflict between Christians, Muslims, and Jews, not to mention the many who believe in no God at all.

Ends well, but frankly most believers don’t hold that nuanced of a position.

I don’t think he would last long if he did call the show, you guys(and almost everyone watching) would think he was a poe, I still find it hard to believe he is for real, almost didn’t make through the whole video, it was SO ANNOYING…

To shorten the video, it’s 15 minutes of Argumentum Ad Hominen plus a big fat argument from ignorance, it was really painful to watch, it’s sad to see what a lack of education plus a lot of brainwashing can do to some people…

Yeesh, I am conflicted here. Is this more of a straw man massacre, or amazingly poor listening comprehension? Then, a five minute argument from ignorance marathon. Then pepper in mockery in the form of mimicking mentally disabled people. And he thinks all this is a great refutation.

Jasper, Right, right, the Burden of Proof….good on you for memorizing your atheist talking points. Requiring evidence too, you are something of a scholar, I can tell. Though, parroting everything your fellow atheists say word for word does not make you an intellectual.

I`m not gonna say having a closed mind is a “bad thing.“ But it seems like you`re limiting yourself in terms of how far you are willing to let your imagination take you. And with only one life to live, that`s a shame.

Martin, I`m honored that you acknowledged my post! In classic Martin style I might add. And of course I mean that as a compliment. Love the show!

I am in full agreement with the Burden of Proof being on the claimant. Tone down the hostility brother. I understand you enjoy belittling theists, and have learned all the atheist vocabulary necessary to win every argument, and that whoever disagrees with you is a fool. That`s cool….relax, you have been able to accurately define `reality.“ You should be more cheerful about that. Turn that frown upside down.

I don’t think they’re being arrogant, and I think they’re very open minded. None of the hosts are experts in any particular scientific field (except maybe Russel & computer sciences), and when the discussion wanders into physics or genetics or geology, they always remind the caller that they aren’t experts. But they’re at least able to outline the basics of these sciences coherently, something these callers (or video posters) can only clumsily attempt. One thing that theists don’t seem to expect is that Matt IS an expert (or at least well versed) in THEIR scripture and theology. That kind of basic command of knowledge isn’t “arrogance”, and it’s a lot more than just memorizing fallacies.

The open-mindedness is in an atheist’s answer to the “big questions” like “Where did everything come from?” and “What caused the universe?”, when we answer “We don’t know!”. These theists say “I know, I know!” and then proceed to tell us all about how they “just know”, based on their gut feelings, or on an ancient book of magic stories. What would you consider “open minded”? Do the hosts have to say “Hmm, maybe you COULD cram the knowledge of good and evil into a fruit, to be obtained via consumption by a dirt-man and rib-woman!”? I can’t think of a LESS arrogant position to hold than “we don’t know”.

modern to be submitted to hiw wife? tstststst you are sexist, anyway the way he looks all the time at his right seems that he is acting like his wife is watching him if he does things right. looks like a fake to me. and that flag from france near israel with a red cross on the blue…funny anyway to watch.

You make a good point. Arrogant is probably a bad choice of word for the hosts. They can come off as a bit condescending, but that’s just the nature of a live call in show I suppose. People call in to debate, so one side or the other is bound to come off as a bit condescending. Maybe not even condescending but *uncompromising* would be more fair .

After thinking about it, you’re right, it’s usually the theist callers who are very arrogant. It’s funny, I accused the hosts of being “arrogant” and now I’m trying to think of even one host who is arrogant, and their actually all really nice and open-minded people. Jeff Dee is a little rough around the edges, but you can tell he’s a nice guy. I should learn to keep my mouth shut sometimes. Thanks for the perspective.

I don’t even know that “uncompromising” is particularly accurate. If you listen to Non-Prophets Radio as well (or at least the archive, since they’re not regular at the moment), you’ll hear many instances in which they had a huge blowup and argument, then turned around and said, “Well, shit, I was wrong.”

Part of it may be that the fact that a lot of the current cast has been on the show more than 5 or 6 years. After that much time, they’ve heard almost every single argument that the theist callers are likely to come up with. That can lead to a bit of counter-punching before the initial punch, since they already know where the argument is likely to head.

When you’ve discussed the subject as much as they have, you’re more likely to seem rigid and uncompromising. When you’re breaking it back down to basics for the 20th time, you’re bound to glaze over some stuff, particularly when you get one of the many callers who don’t respond to corrections. At a certain point, you’ve just got to be at “Fuck it; this guy isn’t gonna listen.”

Oh my mistake, I thought whitecraft was saying that noimplants4u, the poster of the video in the OP, was a Poe. Edward Currant is well known to be doing deliberate comedy, I didn’t mean to challenge that.

I made it to the 2:30 mark. What an arrogant dimwit. The bit about the flagellum motor inside DNA was especially good. I’m not so sure about Poe’s law. It’s hard to believe that anyone capable of parody or satire could (or would want to) pull off such deadpan idiocy.

Yeah, he reminds me of dealing with my mother. When she tries to explain a problem she’s having with her computer, she uses words that mean something … but they mean nothing close to what she’s using them to say.
It’s gotten to the point that I just have to tell her to stop … usually 10 or 12 times, before she’ll stop describing the problem, since the way she says it is usually impossible. I just have to look at it, myself, the next time I’m at her house, and I’ll generally find that she has a cable unplugged, or something stupid like that.

This guy is like that, when it comes to any scientific or logical concept. He’s using real words that mean things, but they don’t mean what he’s using them to try to say.

about 15 minutes of my life I’ll never get back. I think this guy hasn’t taken a critical stance on the Bible. Not only that but doesn’t realize that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all have the same god, but interpreted differently.

This guy needs to do research on the First Council of Nicaea (I learned this from a religion course at school). He was also talking pseudoscience stuff ( My I.Q. dropped at least 30 points). Critical Thinking should be taught at a very early age, I felt really bad watching this as I had a response for every sentence this man said.

I wasn’t taking him too seriously, as he comes across as a substance-less troll.

If theists keep calling the show with the argument “.. and since 2+2=5, therefore …”, it may appear to be a “talking point” to keep having to point out that “no, 2+2=4”, because we keep having to correct the error over and over and over.

Personally, I don’t see “all gods concepts are actually the same god concept vs all god concepts are not the same god concept” as a discussion worth having. Once they actually prove a god exists, then we can talk about whether or not it correlates with existing god concepts. Until then, it’s a moot point that I’ll leave to the theologians to discuss.

If they want to claim Star Wars is real, I’d much rather they prove that _before_ getting bogged down in a discussion about whether or not Han Solo and Jean-Luc Picard are really the same person and the Trekkies just got things completely wrong.

Oddly enough, the father of a buddy of mine in high school had claimed that the pope after JP2 would be an “anti-pope” and that it was a sign of the end times. I don’t know where he got it from, but I’d imagine he went out and spent a lot of money on ammunition last month.

Oh, sorry. False alarm, he doesn’t talk about the show in this one. He is boring (and bored) to hell (or stoned) in talking about how Darwin wouldn’t be an evolutionist today and the “missing links” missing. Don’t loose your time watching this on, really.

I think that allows too much though and leads to a the false dichotomy instead of taking the broader view that humanity has invented thousands of religions and the chances that yours is true is commensurately small. The false dichotomy of “either religion is true or atheism is true” (a stupid claim on many levels, especially the one that not believing something can be “true”) gives theists this apparent 50-50 ground (in their own muddled minds at least), where really it should be more like 1-in-1000, even if one or more gods do exist.

I think allowing that monotheism is the “correct” mythology elevates it above other mythologies as well, which we should not allow. The monotheistic religions that have been invented relatively recently are no more legitimate (until proven otherwise with facts) than any of the polytheistic religions that were previously invented. By ceding that and arguing “god or no god” we are making a big mistake. Before we argue whether “God” exists, we should first make the theist prove that one god should exist rather than 30 gods, or 360 gods. I think that this is important, because any effort to prove their particular god (especially if they must first unambiguously describe that god) exists and no others do, highlights the silliness and untenable nature of their claim.

Well Atheists do seem to have a “language,” at least passionate atheists, by which I mean atheists who care enough about atheism to talk about it a lot, spend time on an internet forum discussing it, or watch a T.V. show called “the atheist experience.” I wasn’t asserting that atheists have any religion or worldview, but you have to admit, atheists on FTB do seem to use a lot of the same phrases. “Argument from ignorance” or “burden of proof,” for example.

There’s a sort of circular flow that is universal to every atheists debating technique that I personally have come across, again among atheists who are *passionate* about their atheism. If a theist advances a particular idea, an atheist has a conditioned refutation to this advance. If the theist is able to ‘out-argue’ the atheist on that point, there is a prepared refutation to that idea and it just goes on and on, and if all else fails, and the atheist finds him/herself backed into a corner or a weak link in this chain is discovered by the theist, the atheist has prepared for him/herself an ‘eject button,’ so to speak. They have a particular position they wont budge on one inch, one they are most comfortable with; an approach they are skilled at utilizing, and to me it is kind of similar to the “God dun it and that’s all there is to it” attitude. A lot of the same language is used bilaterally among active atheists this way. It’s like playing a game of checkers with someone who won’t move their back row. I think “uncompromising” is a good way to characterize that. Both theists and atheists are guilty of it. That’s why having an open mind and being more flexible, to me, is more admirable.

Just an example of this debate tactic, on the show a few times I’ve seen Tracie find herself in unfamiliar waters with a caller, and her ‘eject button’ is “Then why haven’t you claimed your 1 million dollars from the James Randi Foundation, if you have this “‘proof.'” It seems there is a lack of imagination for both theists and atheists alike. IMHO

I had to google what a tone troll is, and urbandictionary.com actually names freethoughtblogs by name. This just verifies that on this site if anyone, and I mean ANYONE disagrees even slightly with the majority trolls, they are belittled and called trolls. A site full of trolls calling everyone that disagrees with them trolls. The internet is a scary social experiment. Sheesh.

I was going to continue to argue my side, but then I realized that most deconversion stories I’ve heard from former theists have started out with them finding their own god concept untenable and then spending X amount of time examining other god concepts until they finally came to the conclusion that they were all bunk. I think you’re right; I’ll have a go at it the next time I argue with a theist.

So, because you’ve looked up a term and found that what you’re doing perfectly fits the listed description, you try to turn it around on the whole blog site? The entry describes the people who do it on PZ’s blog, not the blog itself.

Re-read the bit about FreeThought Blogs, in that Urban Dictionary entry. It perfectly describes what you’re doing. You are one of the tone trolls of FreeThought Blogs that the entry is describing. We get a couple, every month or two.

We wouldn’t use the term “argument from ignorance” so much if that wasn’t one of the favorite fallacies of the theists. Atheism is reactionary, by its very definition. Most of what you see from atheists is driven by the flavor of the month (year?) in Christian apologetics.

Standardizing terminology is important for any coherent discussion. Borrowing a term from related sources is a good thing, as long as you fully understand the meaning and application of the term. Atheism tends to take terms from general philosophy and logic, since we actually use it, unlike most of the Christians who call into the show.

I had a student in class today (11th grade English) claim that the new healthcare law will require everyone to get an “implant” to get healthcare at all.

I told him that sounded very much like an urban legend to me, and that it would be on all the news channels (and all over the newspapers) if true. He claimed he saw it on the news. I asked which news. He said some kind of world news. I asked which channel. He said he thought maybe Fox?

lol So I looked it up just now, and the urban legend claims everyone is required to get an implant by 3/23/13. It’s listed on Snopes–and confirms the implant story is false.

And since it is false, Fox News probably did report it as gospel truth.

Hmm, it’s a point, yeah. I think Matt’s deconversion, for example, was fairly atypical. Most recent atheists I’ve talked to about it first became distressed by their god-concept, for emotional reasons. Only once they broke away from their indoctrination, because of emotional dissonance, were they able to look at the whole concept of gods rationally.

That’s one of the reasons that the whole community aspect of the atheism movement is so important. We need to be here to catch them and show them how to rationally look at the world, even if they’ve come here for non-rational reasons.

This video has been out there for a while and I was thinking about doing a response a few months ago, but he really isn’t very coherent–it’s just one massive argument from ignorance. He repeated the “flagellum motors” like that was all he had.

And he’s like that “shockofgod”– it’s madness, lunacy, blah blah blah–don’t poison the well too much….

Some videos responding to atheists (or vice versa!) are much better than others–on a scale of 1 to 10 I’d give this fellow a 4.

I absolutely agree I fit the description of “tone troll” as defined by urban dictionary. And that is more of a reflection on the absurdity of the frequenters on this site than of my behavior on this absurd site. “Tone trolls” of course carries a negative connotation, and ironically the reality of it is that the discrediting nature of that label falls into the lap of the “trolls” who accuse “tone trolls” like me of *being* “tone trolls,” because it demonstrates the ill-mannered and insulting/belittling behavior that is a constant on this site.

Seriously, if someone who isn’t an arrogant creep like every other poster on this site were to come here regularly (as I do not), I would imagine they would be dead within a few months from self loathing having committed suicide, because you folks sit around all day and stroke each other’s ego’s until someone with a different viewpoint comes in, you pick up the scent and belittle them into feeling worthless.

When I say that I wish the anti-bully movement had time to confront this site and address it’s nastiness, I expect a bunch of sharks masquerading as “intellectuals” to begin their circling and tear me to shreds, which again demonstrates that most of you are in fact cyber bullies. Admittedly, I am not as smart as the folks here, but that doesn’t mean that me and uneducated people like me deserve to be belittled at every turn. The term “troll” is a great license you folks have manufactured for yourselves to exert your superiority over everyone you like to denigrate.

So, very true, I am a troll….and that terminology and the invention of it only goes to show how inwardly ugly you folks truly are.

I am fully aware this post counts as a “tone troll” post, and that in and of itself verifies my position that you self professed intellectuals on ftb are a collective group of pricks, and are very proud to be as such.

I think that the greatest mystery here, something that I will perhaps never fully understand, is that the vast majority of christians agree that lying is a sin, a crime against God, and honesty is a virtue, yet these people keep on and on with the same old tired lies, and ignoring the simple answers to them.

It seems that lying in the name of Jesus is ok in their minds. (I think that it would be fair to say that if Jesus really existed, and really was like described, he would be horrified to see all the lies that are told in his name.)

The crux of the argument of video maker and the guy who called the show seems to go like this:

1. Amazing stuff exists
2. Somebody had to make this stuff because you can’t get something from nothing
3. Therefore, my personal conception of a god must have done it

While it is hard to argue with people lacking the cognitive ability to see that their logic should also apply to their god (i.e., that somebody had to make him), the key sticking point is “you can’t get something from nothing”. Because they believe you can’t get something from nothing, they posit a being that can make something from nothing.

Actually, you can get something from nothing. (Alternatively, we can say that nothing doesn’t exist., which is a simple truth if you think hard about the definiton,) But, the point is that they are simply asserting this belief based on their faulty conception of “nothing”. Ask him, “How do you know we can’t get something from nothing?” The answer is likely to be “that is the definition of nothing”. So, their belief is based their inability to understand their own argument. That is why they cannot be convinced via argument or evidence.

No, the whole point is that many fundamentalist Christians support Israel because they need to keep them around as the material component of their end-times “Summon Jesus” spell. They don’t really care about Israel, they just need to protect it long enough to have it destroyed. Israelis completely understand this, they just laugh about it as long as the money keeps rolling in.

….and in an especially ugly way in comparison to other websites I should add.

Tone trolling again, that’s the thing right there we’re accusing you of. Instead of contributing here to the discussion, you prefer to comment on the manner things were said (instead of commenting on their validity).

You’re not offending anyone but yourself, we’re really not like upset and like in need of a good vent or something. I ain’t even mad. Just calling out a tone troll when we see one.

When I first got here I posted what I thought was a meaningful reaction to somebody who had called the christian dude in the video “arrogant and ignorant.” Was it not a valid point or contribution to say that atheists are every bit as “arrogant.” I’m confused as to whether that is “tone-trolling” or if making the point that christian’s, typically being the arrogant bastards that they are, are no more arrogant than atheists-that the generalization goes both ways, if that’s a valid contribution. Just for the record, I was genuinely offering my perspective. The purpose of this thread here is to ‘laugh at the goofy moron in the video.’ So if my comments don’t fall in line with that sentiment, am I a tone troll?

I feel kind of sad for this guy. He desperately wants to explain his thinking but the only thing that comes out is disconnected emotional references that rely on others to fill in his gaps.
Not everyone is good at public speaking and even fewer try to learn that task.
This is a good lesson to all that one should not publicly post a first draft.

The point isn’t so much to laugh at this guy, but to discuss his “response” to a show that we’ve all seen. Some people will find it funny. Some will find him crazed, stupid, sad or arrogant. Your particular contribution was that you find the hosts arrogant as well. I would disagree, and the first thing I would offer as evidence is that they are actually listening to what the other person has to say, and attempt honest conversation. I have also never seen them call someone “rain man” in an embarrassing attempt at insult.

You also mentioned that many atheists seem to be using “talking points” or scripts. You mentioned, as an example. the “argument from ignorance” and other fallacies. You do realize these are real things and it means something, right? What you are seeing as dismissive group think is more appropriately a method of interaction and an attempt to look at things in a meaningful way. For some reason this makes you uncomfortable. I have seen people just throw the comment out there, but it’s usually challenged if that happens. If someone tells you that you are using a fallacy in your argument, explain why you are not. Or learn from it. The only reason you have offered as a reason to be dismissive of the techniques is that you’ve seen many atheists ruse it. That’s not a very strong objection. Math teachers will often be repetitive also. My question would be, are the atheists accusing people of using fallacies in error, or are they saying these things so often because people are actually arguing with fallacies? That will tell us who is actually to blame for the overuse of these “talking points”. Otherwise it’s like blaming the police dispatcher for the amount of crime.

Here’s a perfect example. We had one of the regulars of this blog throwing around the Appeal to Nature Fallacy, like it was candy on Halloween, in the comment section of one blog post. He was wrong in both of his applications, as the arguments he was applying it to had nothing approaching the structure or the implication of the fallacy.

If you see someone invoking an argument from ignorance, and you think he’s wrong, then by all means, challenge him on it. Ask for a specific example in which the fallacy was used, if it was a broad reference, as is the case here.

Although, in this particular case, you’d be flooded with examples from this video. I wouldn’t bother challenging it.

I had seen this video last year, and at the time had made a comment on the channel. I just sent an email to Mr. No Implants for me, offering that if he would be interested, that I could try and given him a little bit more information on the science that some of his statements impinge upon. I’m not sanguine, indeed far from it, but I’ve been surprised by people from time to time; and, if it’s a complete waste of time, it shouldn’t take a significant amount of time to show that to be the case. In the meantime, I think it will be very interesting to see how receptive he is to some simple explanations as to how the world actually works.

I will. If it goes well enough, I’d even planned to ask if I could post some of the conversation,.. but it won’t.

Years ago, I was friends with a couple of small parish priests of the church my family when to. I was even an alter boy for a couple of years, even though both Father Tenaro and father Touey, both knew I was a devout atheist. (There were only seven families, and most had no children.)They just thought I’d grow out of it, eventually. I did stop giving the responses in Latin, caus… you know, that’s another one of those things tht makes the pope uncomfortable, but I never did grow out of it.

A couple of years a go, I helped the wife of an older friend with her computer, where she volunteers at a large Baptist church down the road. I became friends with the minister, a very nice man, who I used to tell regularly that he one day had to come to terms with the fact that he was the heretic. And… Even though I told him that the pictures I’d snag off the internet, were probably the only things I’d every actually stolen in my life, all while constantly arguing arguing the exegeses of passages the wanted me to steal the pictures for via the Inigo Montoya gambit – “I do not thing that word means what you think that world means…:

He let me put the deep space study from Hubble, which I’d told him was the most important photograph ever taken, on the cover, and he had great fun explaining it to the congregation, which for some was the only meaningful science they’ed seen in five decades.

When he was dying rather badly of pancreatic cancer, I went to see him late one night, the lateness of the hour due to the fact that he was too often surrounded by those kinds of people who you hope will be out of town when it’s your time to go. I told him that I’d just popped by to tell him, when he wasn’t surrounded by the weeping and gnashing of teeth crowd, that I thought he was one of the Luckiest men I’d ever met. He had nice wife, three lovely daughters, and too many friends to name who genuinely loved and cared about him. In my book, that’s not bed for a nice guy who couldn’t bet a real job…

I hate that little tone the militant/Ignorant theist gets when they find you are an atheist. You know, the Oh-here-we-go tone, like the lady I gave up my weekend to help, but who never the less felt to inform me that not only was I disrespectful to my father not to believe what he did, but that her father would have beaten my atheism out of me. Through it all, though, I’ve never lost that pleasure of being able to explain things to someone, and seeing that light dawn in their eyes – even though it is more typically the reflection of a torch, or the glint off a pitchfork – sometimes people will fool you in the most unexpected ways. It’s just not very often.

At what speed does the earth move around the sun?
Let’s calculate that. First of all we know that in general, the time it takes to travel a distance is equal to the length of that distance, divided by the speed at which you travel that distance. If we reverse that, we get that the speed is equal to the distance traveled over the time taken.

We also know that the time it takes for the Earth to go once around the Sun is 1 year. So in order to know the speed we just have to figure out the distance traveled by the Earth when it goes once around the Sun. To do that we will assume that the orbit of the Earth is circular (which is not exactly right, it is more like an ellipse, but for our purpose it will do just fine). So the distance traveled in one year is just the circumference of the circle. (remember that the circumference of a circle is equal to 2*pi*Radius)

The average distance from the Earth to the Sun is 149,597,890 km. Therefore in one year the Earth travels a distance of 2*Pi*(149,597,890)km. This means that the velocity is about:

velocity=2*Pi*(149,597,890)km/1 year

and if we convert that to more meaningful units (knowing there is 365 days in a year, and 24 hours per day) we get:

No implants has written to me twice. Not very impressed so far, with more of the same list universe tipping creationist arguments, such as ” What about Java Man?” I just want to know if he’s capable of responding rationally. I’ve sent him a few pages with some information and some triggers, as well as a request to allow me to share the conversation. We’ll see.

The velocity of the earth changes due to the whole equal arcs with equal time, elliptical orbits thing. Noimplants had obvious heard that figure somewhere, because the average velocity works out about 66,600 mph. Like most creationists who have scientificalish talking points, they’ve heard many of the words. Very seldom do they actually bother to understand what they mean. When the motion of our galaxy aligns with the orbits of the sun and earth (not perfectly, of course.) the earth is traveling about 1.25 million miles per hour with respect to the local group.

Well, the idea of contacting this fellow gave the start of an answer, but nowhere near enough data to back it up. I wrote several notes, a couple short and some very long, containing mixture of questions, suggestions, and triggers. The two responses I got were of the canned list of creationist ideas variety.

Clearly two short responses are hardly conclusive. However, given the quantity of material I threw at him, all of it in direct answer to his own lists of issues, I would think it highly likely that someone who a,) puts in the industry to make and produce a string of video’s on a given subject, and b.) that they had formed their opinions through some rational process not matter how uninformed or skewed, would have responded to at least one of my points – even if it was to say “Here’s why you are wrong, and please don’t bother me.”

It’s given, that I must have made plenty of mistakes he might have challenged.

It seems likely that he is an attention seeker of the emotional masturbation variety; in that, if you have not idea what you are talking about, you will always be able to find plenty of people who agree with you.

The primate does seem to be an amazing survival tool, but it is expensive. It takes a lot of time to develop and train, and a lot of calories to keep it going. Curiosity, and the nature of intellect in classifying every kind of phenomena, is a force multiplier that allows those brains to formulate conclusions and strategies in advance of crises that might be life threatening, and likely leave too little time to reason to any good effect. (‘I’ve seen lions hiding in those bushes. Maybe I should go the other way.) Unfortunately, you can’t just turn that off when it’s not working. It has always seemed to me, that Religion and conspiracy theories are the lowest energy state for that process, bot conjectural and in actual. They answer so many large and complex questions at once, when a brain isn’t tasked with immanent survival issues. If the trigger for that curiosity is only indirectly survival, and more immediately some endorphin and encephalitis cascades, then being that silly, and receiving approval on top of it, must feel really good. Intellectual masturbation certainly feels really good, I admit, but I suspect it can’t even hold a candle.

I fairness I did, of course, consider possible mitigation. In his defense, If he were to note that some random person sending unsolicited pages explaining, well… reality, may be as disturbing as an attention seeker who hasn’t been burdened with an overabundance of education I certainly could hardly claim he was wrong. Never the less, I’m forced to conclude, although I’m no savant at figuring out why people do the things that they do, that this fellow is probably does lack the capability to deal with new information to set up a new paradigm, and is forced to stick with forcing all data into the one that has early provided for him… or rejecting it out of had.

Even though he is public on his own accord, and I did collect the notes, I think it wold be unethical to post them to an open forum; but, if anyone has an abiding or scholarly interest – coffey3c@gmail.com

Ah, so there’s the conspiracy mindset thrown into the religious brainwashing, you think? That can make it particularly hard to get new information in, yeah. Where do you even start, with someone like that?

Well the problem with these kinds of theists is that since they are not beholden to truth or reason, all they have to do is close their eyes, cross there arms over their chests, and continually mutter “I’m right.” I was in an argument the other day with someone who insisted that we couldn’t even talk unless I admitted that “truth” includes anything that can be conceived by the human mind. I just told him that its dishonest to change the rules to ensure he couldn’t lose. He said that that is what rational argument is about.
These people will never stop being spoiled 8 yr/old children throwing a tantrum.